He's running to a corner one moment and then sharply weaves through players under the basket, all sharp angles and motion at 6 feet 8, eyes always on the ball.

Always. The ball and Morrison are never apart for long, and haven't been since he was shooting a Nerf ball as a toddler.

He has a sense about him when he plays: It's as if he's the only one on the floor.

Morrison is not classified as selfish, but at times, teammates appear to be just friendly shadows and stronger defenders mere nuisances.

He led Division I basketball in scoring as a junior at Gonzaga University last season with 28.1 points a game for a reason. It's all about Morrison finding the ball and the ball finding Morrison, and he receives it with one objective in mind:

Man, how can I get this thing in the hole this time?

Man, that's kind of the way Morrison talks. And with his unruly hair and trademark mustache-in-progress, he reminds you of some hip cat who just walked out of a smoky coffeehouse after open-mike night poetry readings in the '60s. You dig?

He's cool. He's an artist on the court and offbeat off it; freethinker and free spirit.

What other NBA player had posters in college of Che Guevara, rock band Rage Against The Machine, Karl Marx and Larry Bird?

Magic rookie guard J.J. Redick calls Morrison, who has become a friend, "Quirky. Both of us are kind of quirky."

Morrison creates on the floor, developing more shots than Willie Mosconi. He studies videotape as much as some coaches. He can score in a variety of ways: fading, floating, faking, pumping, posting.

Morrison, the son of a former community-college coach, is a gym-rat genius along the lines of Bird and "Pistol" Pete Maravich, all sweat and swagger and shots born from his imagination.

"I can't compare Adam to anybody. He's so unique," Redick said. "There's not a lot of guys who come out of college who can score like that, from all angles. He's got a lot of tricks."

Morrison says his style "fits well" with the pros. He has the confidence to believe that those "You Can't Stop The Stache" T-shirts will reappear, and Bobcats patrons might mimic Zags fans, who applied mascara to their upper lips in tribute.

"The game isn't faster. I'd say it's just quicker," he said. "I think I've proven I'm more athletic than people thought and I can get my shot whenever I want."

Morrison followed a dismal summer-league debut on Monday (12 points on 3-of-14 shooting) with a 29-point game Tuesday in the Bobcats' 88-87 victory against the Chicago Bulls, scoring 15 of Charlotte's first 21 points.

Morrison discovered he had the disease as an eighth-grader. He wears an insulin pump in his abdomen while he plays. He could be seen checking it repeatedly when he was on the bench.

Morrison says he eats at exactly 2:15 p.m. before games to adjust his blood sugar, then feeds his body steak, baked potato and veggies each night. "I do get bored, but hey, it's all about the game," he said. "That's all I care about."

Morrison rejects concern that the rigorous 82-game schedule will wear him down.

"I think it's overblown. People act like since it's another jump that I'm not going to take care of myself," he said.

"But I understand where they're coming from, because if you're paying a 21-year-old kid a lot of money, they have the right to know the whole process. A lot of teams contacted my doctors and nothing has ever been a problem with it. The way I see it, I'll be even healthier on the next level because I can afford a nutritionist and a cook."

Morrison won't allow diabetes to derail his insatiable drive. He learned from his father -- John Morrison coached Dawson Community College in Glendive, Mont. -- that winning meant going out to eat and losing meant staying at home for bologna sandwiches.

The Bobcats already have had a taste of Morrison's ferocious competitiveness.

Last week, with his team trailing by 23 points at halftime of an intrasquad game, Morrison single-handedly rallied it to a victory. Bobcats Coach Bernie Bickerstaff said Morrison scored on seven consecutive possessions, each with a different move or shot.

Morrison was so emotional after Gonzaga was eliminated by UCLA in the NCAA Tournament this year that he broke down on the court in front of a nationwide TV audience.

"Some people could look at it as a positive or negative. Every guy who got eliminated from the tournament was pretty much crying, but I just didn't make it to the locker room," he said. "I could have been thinking about money or this whole process [transition to the NBA], because I knew that was my last game.